Western Front

Zeroes and Ones

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One of the many things that makes baseball great is that it isn't politics. Well, usually. But voting always brings out the best in people. It's when they're at their most logical, exercising reason while avoiding rhetoric and personal attacks.

The color of the sky in my world? Why do you ask?

Bickering is all well and good, but today we'll do something more constructive, albeit imbued with less Great Meaning™. Today we'll consider players who were on only one Hall of Fame ballot and received either zero votes or one vote.

We'll focus on elections dating no earlier than 1978, the first time there's a clear record of players on the ballot that received zero votes in a given year. This date is somewhat arbitrary, but it's easier than using a cutoff based on the Hall of Fame's “dynamic” voting rules.

Zeroes against ones. It's like shirts against blouses, but different. Also, Team Zero is filled with the best(as measured by WAR and JAWS for purposes of this exercise) players to appear on a ballot and receive zero votes, while Team One is filled with the worst players to appear on a ballot and receive one vote. Fair? Hardly, but you already know that about the Hall of Fame. Jesus Alou received a vote in 1985, Roy White didn't. Fairness is irrelevant.

I know, I know. We must strive to overcome our meritocratic bias.

While we're trying to do that, and before we get to the teams, here's some big-picture data:

The pool from which to choose Team Zero is, on average, worse than the pool from which to choose Team One.

There are 2 ½ times as many players in the Team Zero pool than in the Team One pool, so we should expect to find more worthy candidates who didn't receive a vote than unworthy candidates who received a single vote (ooh, foreshadowing).

First Base: Cecil Cooper
Five-time All-Star, two-time RBI leader. Cooper hit .352 in 1980, which would have been noteworthy if not for George Brett's hitting .390 that year. From 1977 to 1983, Cooper hit .316/.354/.504, averaging 22 homers a year. Better than Wally Joyner, not as good as Don Mattingly. TNBJHBA ranks Cooper at No. 28.

Second Base: Dick McAuliffeTNBJHBA ranks McAuliffe as the 22nd-best second baseman in history, calling him “An awkward, odd-looking player who was what you might call functionally effective, but with no style points” and also noting that “the press never got what he was about.” There aren't any great current or recent comps for McAuliffe. Maybe Jay Bell?

Third Base: Jeff Cirillo
Cirillo led MLB with 211 doubles from 1996-2000. He hit .317/.391/.462 during that stretch and was named to two All-Star teams. He led his league in putouts at third base twice and in assists three times.

His offense disappeared at age 32. From that point to the end of his career, Cirillo hit .256/.320/.350 in more than 1,600 plate appearances.

Shortstop: Denis Menke
This is, by far, the weakest position. TNBJHBA ranks Menke as the 62nd-best shortstop in history. He hit .283/.368/.479 for the Braves as a 23-year-old in 1964, made the National League All-Star team for the Astros in 1969 and 1970, and was part of the November 1971 trade that brought Joe Morgan to the Reds.

Menke is kind of like Mark Ellis, on the other side of the bag. Name rhymes with Henke, if you ever find yourself stuck for one.

White hit .268/.352/.394 in nearly 3,900 plate appearances from age 29 to his final season at age 35. TNBJHBA has him at No. 25 among left fielders and spends 2 ½ columns explaining why he was better than Jim Rice.

Center Field: Jimmy Wynn
If the Toy Cannon had spent his entire career in Boston, grounded into more double plays, drawn fewer walks, played a less demanding position, had a less awesome nickname, and gotten along worse with the media, we'd be saying “In Like Wynn.” Instead, he'll have to settle for being ranked by TNBJHBA as the 10th-best center fielder in MLB history.

Pitcher: Jack Billingham
Billingham finished fourth in the 1973 NL Cy Young Award race. Tom Seaver, who won, had a WAR that year more than twice Billingham's career total. Voters are dazzled by superficial numbers; maybe someone couldn't resist the 145 wins on Billingham's ledger. Like Menke, he was part of the Joe Morgan trade.

Catcher: Terry Kennedy
Kennedy is Team One's best player. The four-time All-Star hit .264/.314/.386 in nearly 1,500 games and later managed Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson with the Golden Baseball League's San Diego Surf Dawgs. Kennedy's father, Bob Kennedy, played in the big leagues from 1939 to 1957.

First Base: David Segul
Seguí is practically tied with Mike Jorgensen (1991, 7.9 WAR, 8.8 JAWS), but since we are in strict binary mode, there are only winners and losers. Sorry, Mike; your WAR wasn't quite low enough.

Like Kennedy, Seguí is a second-generation big-leaguer. Diego Seguí pitched from 1962 to 1977, leading the AL in ERA in 1970. Dad received zero votes in his only year on the ballot, 1983.

Left Field: John Lowenstein
As with first base, there was tough competition here, with Lowenstein edging Gates Brown (1981, 9.2 WAR, 9.8 JAWS). A favorite of Earl Weaver and teammate of Singleton, Lowenstein enjoyed a great seven-year run with the Orioles, hitting .274/.365/.460 in nearly 1,800 plate appearances. More than 60 percent of his career WAR came in 1982 and 1983, when he hit a combined .301/.395/.543.

Center Field: Jose Cardenal
Cardenal never made an All-Star team but got onto at least one MVP ballot in 1972 and 1973. He led AL center fielders with 11 errors in 1965 and again with 10 in 1968. He ranks 39th in history with 137 caught stealing. Cardenal was traded six times in his 18-year career.

What can we learn from this? Well, for one thing, it's time to let go of the outrage we might feel at the fact that Jim Deshaies received a vote in 2001. Save that for the folks who wasted a vote on Hal Lanier or Jesus Alou (not the players themselves; it isn't their fault).

Perhaps more importantly, we can appreciate some very good players who were in no way ever deemed worthy of Hall of Fame consideration by voters:

I've been doing something quite similar each of the past 2 years on my site, giving stat category leaders for those who received no zero votes on their ballot:
http://valueoverreplacementgrit.com/2013/01/14/ten-years-no-hof-votes-where-is-the-love-2013-update/

Bernie actually broke 5% the first time (9.6%), last year. I don't think he had a realistic chance anyway, but I'm sure the number of big name entries onto the ballot this year had some to do with his getting knocked off in year 2.

I'm kind of surprised that Tanana never got more consideration than he did as he was a pretty dominant pitcher before he got hurt, and afterward he was a league average inning eater or a long time. I guess the voters remember the later phase but not the first 5 years of his career.